The Universal Postal Union has a complex system that administers contracts between member post offices relating to terminal dues paid between and among different post offices. Terminal dues are the payments made between national postal administrations to cover the costs of handling and delivering international mail. Rates are established by the Universal Postal Union and through bilateral and multilateral agreements. Typically, a post office will charge another post office for the delivery of mail to a recipient within its jurisdiction. For instance, if mail is sent from the United States to the United Kingdom, the United States post office will deliver the mail to the Royal Mail, and the Royal Mail will deliver the mail to the recipient. At the end of a predetermined time, the United States post office and the Royal Mail will tabulate, by weight, all of the mail each post office delivered for the other post office and calculate how much money one post office owes to the other post office.
One of the disadvantages of the above procedure is that it does not accurately determine the services performed by each post office.
An additional disadvantage of the prior art is that each post office was not sure that it was receiving the proper amount of money for the services it was performing
A further disadvantage of the prior art is that mail did not have an indication of the value of the services produced by different post offices.